Are you a control freak? I am. I love knowing what’s going to happen next, or what needs to get done next. I don’t mind surprises, but I’d much rather have a 10-step plan laid out beforehand. I’m a planner…and I love planners! (Get it?!) I buy a new planner every year and do my best to fill it with all my future activities. When I was working on my undergrad (and even now as I take a couple extra classes) I would print out my syllabi (or is it syllabuses? I never quite figured that out…Googles says both are correct lol) and I would write all my assignments in my planner so I knew exactly what was due when. That’s not even the worse part. The worse part is I’m a long-term planner. What I mean by that is that I love to plan for the next 5, 10 years and “know” where I want to end up.
Why do I say this is worse? Well, life is unpredictable. No one truly knows what’s going to happen today or tomorrow, much less 10 years down the road. Nevertheless, that is exactly what I had done the majority of my life, especially my young adult life; plan out my days, weeks, months, and years. There is just one problem with that…my perfectly planned out plans haven’t exactly been executed how I thought.
Ever since graduating from college, things haven’t exactly panned out as expected. From a broken relationship, to two lost jobs, to month upon month of unemployment…let’s just say this is definitely not what I had in mind post-college graduation.
So why the “slow to speak and slow to anger” title? Well, for those who don’t know, it comes from one of my favorite passages James 1:19b-20 “But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”
This summer has been a really difficult summer to go through. Why was this happening? Why weren’t things working out as I had planned and hoped? What did I do wrong?
I have been frustrated and upset. I have prayed and cried and sought God’s word. I have begged Him, pleaded with Him, questioned Him, demanded of Him…anything you can think of. Finally, I had to take a step back and search out where the root of this anger was coming from. I couldn’t keep going on this upset and I knew it was more than just not having a job. It didn’t take long for me to discover what the issue was. Control.
I was laying out my plans and praying “But your will be done God” when, in reality, I “knew” my plans were going to work out. Why wouldn’t God bless them? But that’s not how He works and coming to that realization (again) has been a process. So, one morning, I sat in our living room with my journal and began to pray and write. Here’s pieces of what I wrote:
But my thoughts and heart have been so consumed with them (my plans & goals)…that I frustrate myself and live with a very ungrateful heart. That’s not the life I am going to live anymore…I’m surrendering control and the need to meet a specific time frame. My own time frame…
Here’s my challenge to you…stop planning! *Gasp* I know! It hurts just to type that. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good to have long-term goals. I think it’s good to have a plan, maybe even a backup plan (It’s actually very Biblical). But, if you’re as rigorous and controlling as I am, I’d challenge you to live the next day, or week, or even the rest of this year, with absolutely no plans. Live it in complete faith in God. See what He does. I can promise you that you’ll notice a difference…but not how you expected.
I’ll end with this, giving up our “Isaac” is never easy. For many, it’s a daily practice, a daily surrender. For me, I have had to be slow to speak what I think; slow to get angry when it comes to how I hope my life will go versus how it’s actually going. So, I just sit and listen. Waiting on God. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
growinginwisdomtoday 